Work to begin out back for new CC front door

When work begins July 1 to make the CC's back door the front,
consider the Clinical Research Center project officially under way.

"This is the first big step," notes David Esch, architect with Zimmer, Gunsul, Frasca Partnership,
design firm for the new complex that
will cover the entire north faceing 10 once
it's complete early next century.

A new glass-fronted lobby to be constructed in front of Masur Auditorium
will feature built-in information and security booths and a waiting area
with ample seating. A new lobby stairway will go to B1. Visitors and staff
will walk into the lobby through a larger-than-life revolving vestibule.

A cantilevered roof and canopy will shelter four traffic lanes, three
for driving through and dropping off; one for campus shuttles. An existing
service road provides a general path for the new driveway, which will be
lined to the south with new trees.

The road will be extended to loop back down the hill and lead out along
the western outer edge of parking lot 10 H. "This made the most sense
of all the options considered," Esch explained. "We'll be making
use of existing resources while trying to save every single parking space
we can."

Two main corridors leading from the new lobby to the building's core
are planned to
ast and west sides of Masur Auditorium.

That H-shaped pattern lays the groundwork for straight-shot passage from
the south entrance to the new CRC, similar to the way it used to be.

"The original Clinical Center building featured a very rational
layout," said Esch, characterizing the current layout as "circuitous."

Once the CRC is complete, the new south entrance will become the building's
primary pedestrian access, which dovetails nicely with the NIH master plan,
Esch pointed out.

"The idea is that the CC will form the north face of an almost academic
quadrangle," he explained, "so the temporary-entrance project
becomes a permanent amenity for the campus as a whole, not a throw-away."

After CRC construction is complete, the south drive will be for pedestrian
and emergency vehicle use only and the canopy will come down. (by Sara Byars)

Parking plan makes the most of what's
here

Hoping to keep the parking squeeze from becoming a stranglehold, NIH
officials are putting into place a sweeping plan to deal with a drastically
dwindling supply of parking places for visitors and staff.

"We have to cope with the loss of spaces to new construction while
finding ways to more efficiently manage the spaces we have," explained
Stella Serras-Fiotes, master planner in the Division of Engineering Services
facilities planning and programming branch, a part of the NIH Office of
Research Services.

"We lost 450 parking spaces last year, and will have to deal with
the loss of close to 1,000 spaces this year." In 1998, NIH will probably
lose 500-700 more. (See sidebar "Who's parking where?" on page
6.)

Serras-Fiotes outlined the plan of t
ck at a CC Operations and Planning
Committee meeting last month. It calls for managed, attendant-assisted "stacked"
parking for some employee and visitor lots; parking fees for visitors, except
those parking in the CC's P3; new campus parking meters; temporary lots;
and moving parking for construction workers off campus.

Some specifics as currently planned include:

--Temporary lots will add about 400 spaces to the parking
inventory, primarily to offset parking losses associated with building
50 construction on the site of parking lot 13C.

The temporary lots should be open by early July in these locations:
south of lots 41 A, B, and C; in front of the Cloister; near Natcher; by
the electrical power station at building 17; and at NLM.

--Visitor parking will be consolidated and expanded to
include 1,200 spaces. Paid parking for visitors is planned
to begin Aug. 4 for the top two and a half level of
LP-8; a section of
lot 4A; and a new lot that's now location of a construction trailer near
Natcher. Parking meters-120 of them-will go in near buildings 13, 36, 38,
31, and Natcher.

NIH received permission from GSA to collect the fees, which will help
pay for the contract to provide attended parking services campus wide,
Serras-Fiotes explained. The rate is expected to be $2 an hour for the
first three hours and $12 a day.

Some existing visitor spaces will be converted to employee parking in
exchange for employee spaces lost in new stacked parking areas, Serras-Fiotes
pointed out.

--The lower four and a half levels of MLP-8 will be converted to attendant-assisted
parking for NIH employees. This is also expected to begin Aug.
4.

--Also beginning in August, construction contractors will
have to park at satellite parking facilities and will have a dedicated
shuttle service.

--Stacked parking will gi
in the fall for employees
leaving cars in lots 31 B, C, D, F, and G. Once all spaces in those lots
are full, attendants will direct drivers to the aisles. Keys stay in the
cars and will be secured by the attendants. When it's time to leave, the
attendants will move any blocking cars.

"This will add capacity for more than 330 additional cars, primarily
to offset parking losses associated with the Clinical Research Center construction
and relocation of Center Drive," she said.

The parking crunch hit the CC hard when crucial repairs to its parking
garages began last November. That work will continue to absorb about 400
parking spaces for the next three years.

In January, a contract was let to provide attendant-assisted parking,
primarily for patients, on P3. Another early intervention was converting
a motor pool lot between the CC and building 1 to general parking, opening
up 40 spaces near the building. "Future plans include enhanced naged
op
rations of all parking and transportation resources on campus,"
Serras-Fiotes said. (by Sara Byars)

Who's parking where and why
are they doing it?

Who's parking where on a typical day? That's what the Division of Engineering
Services wanted to know as they prepared the NIH campus parking management
plan.

So they counted and categorized all the parking places and the cars parked
in them between 10 a.m. and noon on a recent Wednesday, explained Stella
Serras-Fiotes, master planner in the DES facilities planning and programming
branch.

The survey revealed that, yep, the 8,700 employee spaces were packed,
as were the 900 spots for visitors. All told, employee stickers were on
8,000 parked cars. Another 50
cars sported either service stickers or
no stickers at all.

Surveyors counted 400 unstickered cars in the employee lots and 200 cars
with employee stickers in the visitor lots. The tally included another 200
employees and visitors who had obviously given up and parked on the grass.

Only 350 cars in the 900 carpool spots actually sported carpool stickers.
(Most of the carpool lots open to regular employee parking after 9:30 a.m.)
The 1,000 spaces for cars with red stickers had 685 red-stickered cars in
them. Two hundred and twenty cars with service stickers-there are 37 spaces
designated for those parkers-were counted.

About 15,800 employees and countless visitors vie for these parking places
daily. Federal rules say that staff are entitled to half a parking space
each. Ideally, Serras-Fiotes pointed out, 10 percent of the parking spaces
should be empty at any given time. At NIH, it's less than four percent.

He built Washington and the Clinical Center,
too

He built the Jefferson Memorial, the Pentagon, the Kennedy Center. He
gutted the interior of White House when Truman lived there and put it back
together with a internal spine of steel.

He dug out the tunnels for the Pennsylvania Turnpike and pioneered the
use of pre-cast concrete-the HUD building was the first federal structure
so constructed. The Washington Post building, the State Department, the
National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The bricks and mortar were
his, prompting one journalist to write more than 40 years ago that L'Enfant
may have planned the city, but John McShain built it.

He also built the original Clinical Center, which is about to undergo
expansion that will change its external face forever. McShain's 6,8
4,200
bid to construct the hospital's superstructure was the winning one. Work
began on Jan. 4, 1950.

Bad weather, material delivery delays, and strikes conspired to produce
delay after delay and the CC's first director, Dr. Jack Masur, seemed not
amused. He told construction chiefs at one point that the hospital would
be "the major hospital center in the country or in the world. There
are 17 million square feet in this job and 17 million details," none
of which would prevent completion.

An exhibit covering McShain's career was at the National Building Museum
earlier this year. "The Man Who Built Washington" is a traveling
exhibition organized by the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Del.,
whose mission is to preserve and interpret the history of business in our
country. McShain's papers are housed there.

From the director:

On its last visit to the Clinical Center, the Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Heathcare Organizations--known as JCAHO or the Joint Commission--awarded
a three-year accreditation to our hospital.

Our 1994 accreditation came after a four-person survey team of health
professionals spent three days scrutinizing our policies and procedures,
visiting patient-care units, and talking with employees from all areas of
the Clinical Center. That's what will happen again this year.

Why do we seek this accreditation? Because the process offers us a way
to evaluate objectively how well we do our jobs. More than 15,000 other
health-care organizations across the country eek
ccreditation for the
same basic reason and-in the public's mind-accreditation by the Joint Commission
represents quality service in health care.

But there's more to it. Preparing for a Joint Commission visit offers
us an opportunity to recognize and showcase how we provide quality patient
care in a truly unique environment with a distinct clinical research mission.

The Clinical Center's JCAHO Work Group, a multidisciplinary team from
across the Clinical Center and the institutes, has been pulled together
to coordinate efforts in preparation for the accreditation visit. The work
group's web site on the Clinical Center's home page will explore important
topics associated with the accreditation visit and help keep all of you
informed about process.

What always is apparent to and commented on by the Joint Commission survey
teams is how committed you, CC staff, are to our patients and our NIH mission.
How we work together to provide this care is what the accreditation team
will evalua e. A
d when it comes to taking care of patients, no one does
it better than we do.

Working:

Successful organizations demonstrate a simple truth--there's strength
in the collective expertise and experience of its individual members.

A recent series of seminars for Clinical Center employees examined how
to harness individual differences in order to make the whole richer. And
it takes more than technical job smarts to get there.

Technical competency is absolutely necessary for success, pointed out
lecturer Bette George. But so is interpersonal competency, being what she
called "people" competent.

And that was the point of the class-learning how to recognize, relate
to, and learn from each individual s n
que perspective.

"Diversity simply means difference," explained Dr. Jeffery
Johnson. "It does not mean good, better, or best. It means different.
Each of us bring different experiences to any interaction that we have."

The instructors--both experts in organizational development--pointed
out that diversity in an organization:

Offers different ways of looking at problems and solving them.

Brings flexibility and openness to new ideas.

Stimulates creativity and innovation.

Encourages the anticipation and appreciation of others' needs. And,

Makes teams stronger.

And it all can happen when each individual is valued for what he or she
can contribute. (by Sara Byars)

news iefs:

Donors honored

The NIH Blood Donor Center will honor those who give blood with a barbecue
and cremony set for 11:30 a.m. on May 23. The event will be in the glade
behind the Children's Inn. Call 496-1048 for more information and directions.

New name

The office formerly known as building services is now the Office of Facility
Management. They're still located in room 4A13. Jim Wilson is chief of the
office, which provides technical guidance, administrative support, and coordination
of design and construction for the facility.

Child care seminar

The NIH Day Care Oversight Board will sponsor a brown bag lunch seminar,
"The Relation Between Family, Child Care, and Child Development-Implications
for Families and for Policy," on May 15, from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
in building 1, Wilson Hall.

Dr. Sarah Friedman, scientific coordinator for NICHD's study of early
child care, ill
alk about findings pertaining to cognitive and language
development and mother-child interaction during the first three years of
life.

Preregistration is not required and the seminar is free. For details,
call Gladys Bohler at 496-9231, or email carol_wigglesworth@nih.gov.

CC visitors

Dr. Barbara Sonies, chief of the Rehabilitation Medicine Department's
speech pathology section, demonstrated the untrasound for visitors to the
CC speech-language pathology lab as part of the NIH Take Your Child to Work
Day events April 24. Clinical Center departments offered hands-on activities,
tours, and presentations throughout the day.

Aerobics

Want to join a noon aerobics class? A class featuring certified instructors
is offered Mondays and Wednesdays in the 14th floor gym. Cost is $5 per
class or $35 for nine. Call Judy at 496-8738 or Christy at 983-8131 for
more information.

PEF cti
n

Place your bid at the annual Patient Emergency Fund Auction on June 3
in the Visitor Information Center between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Choose from silent auction items for fine dining, great escape weekends,
and tickets to popular games and shows. Or check out the theme baskets donated
by CC departments and packed with goodies. Also on tap will be the collectibles
corner featuring jewelry sales, baked goods, and lunch.

Last year's auction raised more than $8,000 for patients and their families
facing times of crisis. Call Karen at 496-6061 for more information.

Thrift line

Questions about Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) funds? Want to know your monthly
TSP balance? Status of a loan request? Want to change or cancel an interfund
transfer? It's all at your fingertips thanks to the Thriftline, an interactive
voice-response system.

To access the system, you'll need your Social Security and personal identification
numbers. Lost that ID mb
r? Use Thriftline to request another. It'll be
sent to the address in your TSP record.

For all this, call (504) 255-8777.

Training vouchers

The education and training section, Office of Human Resources Management,
has purchased vouchers from CompUSA for CC employees to use for computer
training at no cost to their department's training budget.

CompUSA offers a variety of Mac, PC, and internet courses at training
sites in Maryland and Virginia.

On-site courses (Mac only) will offer fundamental and intermediate training
in MSWord, Excel, and Powerpoint during May and June at 6100 Executive Boulevard.
Call 496-1618 for details. Vouchers must be used by June 26.

Child care seminar

The NIH Day Care Oversight Board will sponsor a brown bag lunch seminar,
"The Relation Between Family, Child Care, and Child Development-Implications
for Families and for Policy," on May 15, from 11:30 m.-1:
0 p.m.
in building 1, Wilson Hall.

Dr. Sarah Friedman, scientific coordinator for NICHD's study of early
child care, will talk about findings pertaining to cognitive and language
development and mother-child interaction during the first three years of
life.

Preregistration is not required and the seminar is free. For details,
call Gladys Bohler at 496-9231, or email carol_wigglesworth@nih.gov.